PART 1: June 17, 2022 - “Everyone Has a Right to Live Memorial Service”

PART 2: June 18, 2022 - Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival

Taking Up the Mantle of Dr. King, Rev. Dr. Berber Delivers Historic Social Justice Speech on Crisis of Morality in the US

(scroll below for text of speech)

Intersection with Public Health Liberation - The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival held a rally the weekend of June 17-18 in Washington, DC that can be broadly understood as a liberation safe space - a radical, anti-structural space-making that is seeking social transformation in the United States to further equality, justice, and health for the poor and low-income. At the heart of Rev. Dr. Barber’s speech is not just a righteous moral or philosophical critique, but a theoretical one. He argues the moral failings of the nation through ethical, religious, and legal reasoning. This is necessarily supported by public health theory - to reify human suffering into collective sacrifice and policy action to improve population health. “As long as there are 87 million people who are uninsured or underinsured. That everybody in the Congress gets free health insurance while they vote against us having the same thing. We won’t be silent anymore…The audacity to call people “essential” workers during the pandemic, then treat them like they are expendable when it comes to healthcare and wages.” Public health theories support that improved health care access and affordability do translate into better health outcomes.

Our readers may be familiar with two of our PHL tenets - philosophy and theory. Together with praxis, training, and research, PHL endeavors a comprehensive, cogent approach to health equity. Philosophy and theory must go hand-in-hand. Our philosophy is enriched by various schools of thoughts: Hegelian philosophy of human development and species-being, emancipatory theories including critical race theory, religious teaching, and other ethics. PHL philosophy can be understood as our values, belief systems, and state of consciousness. On the other hand, PHL theory is our model of causality. It is identical to that which Dr. Barber espouses - a socioecological framework for health. PHL contributes novel concepts to this framework such as liberation theory, public health realism, and applied transdisciplinary or systems knowledge.

Similar to Dr. Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign, PHL values the epistemic significance of perspectives of the economically and socially vulnerable. The weight of interlocking injustices throughout the public health economy is onerous on the poor and low-wage at the expense of human rights and constitutional protections while the gains of American prosperity are not fairly shared. It is the the totality of injustices and systems of exploitation that Dr. Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign are addressing. Given the complexity of these systems, PHL has innovated an approach that is better capable of analyzing and affecting them absent policy change or funding.

The Poor People’s Campaign’s interpretation of calcified social hierarchies suggest an implicit critical view of public health discourse - that a rarefied conceptualization of inequity throughout society is widespread, justifying the need for a new movement. PHL is also aligned with a critical position to the public health economy (See Health Equity and Praxis Terms). The representative groups of the Poor People’s Campaign are often marginalized in public health. The lack of effective participation and influence of poor and low-income populations in major public health organizations has reinforced social hierarchy and hegemonic governance of the public health agenda and funding. We are appalled by the lack of strategic partnership with these communities through the public health educational institutions, research, and advocacy. Our Board is one-half low- and moderate income earners, with one-third from public housing communities. For PHL adherents, the mistreatment of the poor and low-income in public health leadership and stakeholder discussions illustrates the intrinsic sources of health inequity reproduction. The state of health inequity is sustained by human activity and everyday decision-making. Exorbitant membership or conference fees are some common barriers to entry and, in effect, a denial of an inclusive public health agency such that perspective-sharing and meaningful contributions of people who stand to benefit the most from health equity discussions and planning are forestalled. We use hegemonic theory to explain why this exclusion occurs.

In our Health Equity and Praxis Terms, PHL described the concept of hegemony as, "It makes the existing order appear as inevitable through coercion and consent. The theory of hegemonic rule relies on a false appearance of unity of interest between the elite and non-elite of striving classes. Hegemonic theory is helpful to explain the reproduction of health inequity in the United States whereby the public health economic may be overly aligned with powerful interests at the expense of accelerating health equity and an inclusive public health agenda.” Most importantly, PHL centrally positions everyday human-driven policies, structure, and rulemaking as an intrinsic source of the injustices. PHL eschews extrinsic or disassociated explanations of inequity because, as along as systems are considered external to any individual, organization, or group of industries, then accountability and intervention cannot be reasoned.

The public health implication of Dr. Barber’s fact-driven characterization should be deeply disconcerting to every public health official and educator. For all the public health spending in healthcare and research and the vast amount of spending in other areas of the US economy and military defense, the lived experiences of those who are economically and socially marginalized expose a moral crisis. His call for social change, defined as the “Third Reconstruction” is one of three major pathways that we propose for accelerating health equity. PHL posits that significant achievement of health equity in its most essential forms must encompass (See Health Inequity Reproduction): 1) a shift in the mass state of consciousness through increasing and strident calls for equity and liberation expression (precisely what the Poor People’s Campaign is doing), 2) by affecting the pecuniary gains from continued structural violence, and 3) by introducing social and policy constraints. As we describe in our Health Equity and Praxis Terms, evolutionary public health - the iterative change of US public health toward increasing social and racial justice - is often externally motivated to change. The Covid pandemic has become a catalyst for social change, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. While the pandemic constrained or disrupted patterns and practices in the public health economy, the social movements served a multiplicative role (See Equation for Inequity Reproduction).

“We must have over and over again a moral meeting in these streets. We are not unlike our forerunners who sought to mend every flaw of this nation - the abolitionists, those who fought against lynching, those who have stood for families, those who have stood for labor rights, those who have stood for civil right, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights.” Rev. Dr. Barber is discussing the historical and contemporary importance of liberation safe spaces that serve as vital incubation of social change. Public Health Liberation deeply values creation of liberation safe spaces. These are the preconditions for social change. PHL recently published our guide for creating a liberation safe space. We are seeking volunteers to pilot in their community of practice.

Finally, Public Health Liberation relies on kinship and allyship in health equity work. We categorically reject instrumental use of the poor (“poverty pimping”) to satisfy grant requirements or a time delimited engagement, especially when researchers are from institutions that are fully capable of assisting with structural challenges. Rev. Barber stated, “They are us. We are them. We won’t be silent anymore”. This is the encapsulation of Public Health Liberation. We work with communities - sharing our knowledge, the fruit of our research, and provide our skills that they may achieve optimal health.

Text of Keynote Speech for Poor People’s Campaign - Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival (June 18, 2022)

A hundred thousand people are in these streets and on the way. Buses are still coming. Millions have joined us online. Pamela (a Poor People’s Campaign staff member) however is not here. She died because of poverty and the denial of health care and Covid, but today, joined by these young people who have promised that no matter what happens to us they will not let this movement go. On this land where our first nation brothers and sisters lived free. We come here from every corner because there are unnecessarily 144 million poor and low-wage people in this country. That's 43% of the nation. 52% of our children. 66 million White people. 26 million Black people. 6.9 percent of Black people. 68% of Latinos and Natives. More than 60 percent of Asians. (All) who are entangled in the unjust needs of poverty and bound up by the interlocking realities of systemic racism, voter suppression, refusal to pay a living minimum wage, bad tax policy, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, inequitable educational opportunity, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.

Here we are today. This level of poverty and greed in this the richest nation in the history of the world constitutes a moral crisis and a fundamental failure of the policies of greed. These numbers and interlocking injustices are not just about debates between right and left and moderate. No, this language and categories are too puny for what we face. They represent a crisis of democracy - a shared failure to center poor and low wealth people, the very people who are the greatest moral leaders and survivors in our society and the true bellwether of our well-being. There is something else that is even more grotesque - the regressive policies which produce 140 million poor and low wealth people are not benign. They are forms of “policy murder”. We know that prior to the pandemic poor people died at a rate of 700 people a day, 250,000 a year. Poor people have been two to five times more likely to die from Covid during this pandemic so far. We know this can't simply be explained away by vaccination results. It's related to the discrimination in our policies toward poor and low-wealth people.

On Monday of this week, the National Academy of Science said more than 330,000 lives could have been saved during the pandemic if we had simply had a policy of universal health care for all people. A policy which is a human right that should never be connected to your job but always connected to your humanity. Because many of the people you see here today know these realities - know this pain, this injustice and this death from personal experience. We knew that we must gather here. We must have over and over again a moral meeting in these streets. We are not unlike our forerunners who sought to mend every flaw of this nation the abolitionists, those who fought against lynching, those who have stood for families, those who have stood for labor rights, those who have stood for civil rights and women's rights and LGBTQ rights and the right for women to control their own bodies, those who have stood for peace in the time of war, those who have demanded that children be treated right, and those who have demanded just immigration policies in a nation full of immigrants. All of these people have come to these same streets to openly expose the moral crises throughout our history. This sacred moral procession has been required at various parts in our history to exorcise the demons of greed and hate and racism in our society. They have all recognized that there comes a time we must have a moral meeting. Such is this moment. This is why we are here and we won't be silent anymore.

We've come to this mass Poor People's Low-Wage Workers Assembly and tomorrow march on Washington and to the polls because we must meet this moment. We must meet in the streets. We must meet at the ballot box. We must meet at the political suites of this nation. We have to cry out from the pulpits and the public square. We know we're on solid ground from which to raise our critique. Our great moral and constitutional traditions, they give us solid ground to declare that we must establish justice and ensure equal protection under the law for all people. We know that when the nation is moving away from the principles of life, liberty, justice, the pursuit of happiness for all people and there's been a long train of [unclear] that and the nation has become more profitable for a few and less perfect for others, we must correct the nation. And we can't be silent anymore. We know that our greatest moral traditions in Scripture call us to stand up, call us to mourn, and refuse to be quiet. Is it not Isaiah that said, “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children.” Holy scripture from every place calls us to repentance in a time of crisis - from Amos to Isaiah to the gospels of Jesus. We are told we must gather a remnant of people who are willing to cry in the public square. We know that there are moments when in the anointing we must declare good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind. We must remind every nation that no matter how great she claims her gross domestic product is or how powerful her military, every nation is under divine judgment until they fully care and fully love for the least of these - the hungry, the outcast, and the lifter. We know that every religious tradition from Judaism to Islam to Unitarianism not only believe the divine moral of the universe exists but moves us, by the spirit, to bend the moral arc with the weight of our nonviolent actions.

Today, make no mistake America we are determined to bend the moral arc right here once again in America. We are resolved not to stop until we no longer have to fight. We are resolved not to stop until we no longer have breath to breathe or strength to give. We are the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Together with our allies, we won't be silent anymore. We are not going to beg, but to demand. What we are demanding is not radical, it's simply right. We've come to put a face and a voice on these numbers of poverty - to show that behind them, inside them are real people and real lives. They are us. We are them. And we won't be silent anymore.

The very fact that these realities exist means, Dr. (Cornel) West, that we are engaged in a moment that is constitutionally inconsistent, morally indefensible, politically insensitive, and economically insane. As the great prophet of the Harlem Renaissance declared, “We must take back our mighty land again. America has never been America to me but we swear this oath that America will be.” We must say with our bodies, with our voices, with our organizing, with our preaching, with our standing, even with our suffering and our sacrifices, that we won't be silent or unseen or unheard anymore. As long as there are 140 million poor and low-wealth people in this country - and we know it doesn't have to be this way - we won't be silent anymore. As long as there are 87 million people who are uninsured or underinsured and everybody in the Congress gets free health insurance whether they vote against us to have the same thing, we won't be silent anymore. As long as catering to the lobbying of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 49 Republicans and two Democrats refused to vote fairly and denied 32 million people just last year a $15 an hour minimum living wage, we won't be silent anymore. As long as we know this nation will never really deal with inflation and recession until she does right by the poor and low wealth of this country. As long as we have the hypocrites and the audacity to call people essential workers during the pandemic and then treat them like they're expendable when it comes to health care and wages. As long as two Democrats and four Republicans block child income tax credits - lift folks up for a few months out of poverty and then drop them right back to hell in poverty. We won’t be silent anymore. As long as people keep asking, “How much will it cost,” rather than ask the real question, “How much does it cost for things to stay like they are?” As long as there are the lies of scarcity and the lies, “We don't know what to do.” As long as we have the stealing of native land and unjust immigration. As long as your health and your income can be determined by who you love. As long as people go to bed hungry. As long as millions of our neighbors are homeless or facing homelessness. As long as 4 million people can get up every morning and buy unleaded gas they can't buy unleaded water. As long as our military spends twice as much as Iran, Iraq, Russia, and North Korea combined. And we know that just 10 of that bloated military budget could provide health care and public education. We won't be silent anymore. As 55 million people are facing voter suppression.

Let us be clear we are not simply here for a day. This assembly is to declare the full commitment of a fusion coalition. if you didn't know America, you better ask somebody. We are Black. We are brown. We are native. We are Latino. We are Asian. We're young. We're old. We're gay. We're straight. We're trans. We're independent. We're from California to the Carolinas from Massachusetts to Mississippi from Georgia to the Great Lakes from the Apache land to Alabama to Appalachia from Montana to Missouri from Alaska to Arkansas. We ain't going nowhere.

Now is the time for a Third Reconstruction. We are the rejected who've been rejected by the politics of trickle-down economics and rejected by neo-liberalism. 150 years ago, Blacks and poor Whites built the First Reconstruction. Over 50 years ago, Black and White people and Latinos joined people of faith and followed the prophetic servant leader Martin Luther King and took on racism, poverty, and militarism -  and a Second Reconstruction. But now is our time for a Third Reconstruction. We are not an insurrection, but we are a resurrection. This is the day that the Lord hath made. This is the day that the stones that the builders rejected are coming together to be the cornerstone of a new reality. So make no mistake from the state house to the Congress to the White House, this is no one day on and one day off. This is a movement - until children are protected, until sick folks are healed, until no wage workers are paid, until immigrants are treated family, until affordable houses are provided, until the atmosphere, the land and the water are protected, until saving the world and diplomacy and living in peace is more important than blowing up the world. We won’t be silent anymore. If we have got to march, we will march. If we have got to engage in non-violent direct action, we will engage. If we have got to give more attention with the media, we'll do it. If we have to ask workers to make Election Day a labor strike day. As long as politicians are hurting the people that God wants healed, we say to American, “You have made a promise one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” What a day. What a day that will be. Until then, this promise is non-negotiable. And we won’t be silent, and unseen or unheard anymore.

Text of Keynote Speech for Memorial Service - Rev. Dr. Alvin O'Neal Jackson, Executive Director of the Mass Assembly of the Poor People's Campaign (June 17, 2022)

At the height of the pandemic, a name change. We call them essential workers but we never gave them the essentials they needed to live. So much death. So much death that didn't have to be. Almost every day we're holding vigils in cities and hamlets across the land for people we've lost to senseless gun violence. So much death that doesn't have to be. So much death from the interlocking injustices and evils of systemic poverty, systemic racism, ecological devastation, the denial of health care, the war-based economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism. So much death that doesn't have to be. So we come tonight to remember but our healing will come not just in remembering but in repenting

We come tonight around this Reflecting Pool not just to remember but to repent, to mourn, to wail, to cry, to repent. It seems like the ancient scriptures were written just yesterday in our context and directly addressed to us. It is with this poetry from the 8th century Hebrew prophet Isaiah hear it in the Message Bible from the first chapter, “Quit your worship charades. I can't stand your trivial religious games, monthly conferences, weekly sabbaths, special meetings. Meetings. Meetings. Meetings. I can't stand one more meeting — meetings for this, meetings. I hate them. You've worn me out. I'm sick of your religion religion religion while you go on sinning. When you put on your next prayer performance, I'll be looking the other way. No matter how long aloud or often you pray, I'll not be listening. Do you know why? Because you're tearing people to pieces and your hands are bloody. Go home and wash up. Clean up your act. Sweep your lives clean of your evil doings so I don't have to look at them any longer.” Say no to wrong. Learn to do good work for justice. Help the down and out. Stand for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless. That must be the work of our hands. Say no to wrong. Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down and out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless, but the prophet says first you must go and wash and clean up the blood that is on your hands.

To that we say but what blood? I haven't done anything wrong. I’m innocent. I feel badly about what's happening in the nation and in the world. I feel badly about all of this death and war and poverty and racism and hate and injustice. I feel badly about it, but I’m innocent. There's no way in the world you can connect me with what's going on. I haven't done anything. I haven't pulled any triggers. I’m innocent. It's nice to go around and shake your head and feel badly about things but don't you see not to make a commitment, not to get involved, is to be involved? Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”* We good people who sit back and do nothing and say nothing, but share in the blame and responsibility.

We have come tonight to mourn to wail, to cry, to lament, to repent. We come like Callie Grier from Alabama to mourn and will because so many of our family and our children are no more — not just to remember but to repent. Our call to repentance is not just a call to individuals but it's a call to the nation. Profound intentional radical systemic change in our national policies and practices that is the evidence of true repentance. It is as if the prophet poet is saying don't just talk about love — show love. Show it in your systems and structures, in your institutions, in your practices and policies. This talk of thoughts and prayers in the face of so much death and suffering is hollow and empty and meaningless. Yes, we are appalled at the gun violence in the land but not enough of us are sufficiently appalled to cast our votes to halt it. Not enough of us are sufficiently appalled to march and protest and persist and cry and mourn until we get the change we seek. Like that Syrophoenician woman who had a daughter at death's door and didn't get what she needed from Jesus. But she said I’m not leaving until I get some help and healing and health care. I’m going to stay right here. I’m going to wail and holler.

I’m going to break the rules. Business as usual will not do. Moderation won't do. Timidity and tentativeness is not in order. Sometimes peace has to become obnoxious. Complacency, apathy, indifference, calm quiet, cool, calm, and collected is not an order. It's not a viable option. Every now and then, you've got to stand up and howl against the night. The people who impose it this must be the work of our hands. This is the work of the Poor People's Campaign. It is the reason for this assembly. It is the reason for our march — the reason for this call for the Third Reconstruction, fully addressing poverty and low wealth from the bottom up. Daring to imagine a world where everybody is in and nobody is out — not tearing each other apart. Saying no to wrong. Learning to do good. Working for justice. Helping the down and out. Standing up for the homeless. Going to bat for the defenseless. This must be the work of our hands. Lest you think it's all in our hands know that God stands with us. We're not alone. We're never alone. Somebody said God has no hands but our hands. That's mighty funny God made our hands without our hands. God has God's own hands. God's own ways of bringing to pass God's purposes. Jesus said if I hold my peace the rocks will cry out. Rocks were not made to do it but if we won't do it, geology we'll take up the task. God can do this work with us or without us. There is a moral arc in the universe and it bends towards justice. Before God had a Bishop Barber and then Dr. Liz (Theoharis), there was a Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Before that, there was Bayard Rustin and a Dorothy Day and a Caesar Chavez and a Rabbi Heschel and before that an Ida Barnett-Wells and before that a Frederick Douglass and a Sojourner Truth, Susan B Anthony. Before Ester, there was a Noah. Before there was an Adam, the morning star sang together and the sons and daughters of God shouted for joy. God can do this with or without us. Yes, God can. I know God can. People might frustrate the will of God but they can never stop it. We can slay the dreamer but you can't kill the dream. You can murder the prophet but you can't stop the proclamation. In the end, right will win. Truth from the earth will rise again the wicked will cease from troubling and the weary will be at rest. Weeping endures for night, but joy comes in the morning. In the meantime, we are reminded that this must be the work of our hands the work of justice and love and care and compassion and the inclusion of all. We come tonight to remember to repent to mourn to cry for therein lies our true healing. Amen.

*Common misattribution according to scholars